This is one of the Met’s ‘Live in HD’ performances relayed to cinemas last year. It comes complete with the brief introduction to each act by Deborah Voigt; the interviews are consigned to the bonus feature. The director, appropriately enough, is Sir David McVicar and the designer is another Scot, John Macfarlane, whose period costumes and simple sets are both imaginative and respectful. Just the one set, essentially: four steps lead up to a platform from which, at the end, more steps ascend to the scaffold. The background changes appropriately: trees for the fateful – and fictional – meeting of the queens; a wall covered in graffiti for Mary’s cell.

Though the mood of the opera is sombre, there’s a lightness of touch to the beginning. A cheerful chorus welcomes Elizabeth, who enters dressed in white: her hand is being sought by the Duke of Anjou, and she muses on love and liberty. Prompted by Cecil to order Mary’s execution, she shows her haughty side; in the scene with Leicester, she is tender as well as imperious. In the Second Act we see her old, rouged, with a new auburn wig. Elza van den Heever is quite brilliant as she moves from skittish to jealous, contemptuous and baleful.

The three men are all good. Joshua Hopkins (anti-Mary) is implacable, Matthew Rose (pro-Mary) dignified and compassionate. Matthew Polenzani is Leicester. His phrasing may lack the elegance of Bergonzi or Kraus but he cuts a believable figure as a passionate man with divided loyalties, and his singing is always pleasing. As Mary, Joyce DiDonato is an absolute knock-out. She makes a tender impression with her cavatina, the regretful cantabile followed by perfectly placed coloratura in the cabaletta. She holds herself back in the ‘false canon’ that opens the confrontation before, goaded beyond endurance, she lets rip. In prison, shaking uncontrollably, she has a moving confessional scene with Talbot; at the scaffold, her preghiera (prayer) builds up to a mighty climax before she forgives Elizabeth and bids farewell to Leicester. In all this, DiDonato is spellbinding through a perfect combination of singing and acting. Maurizio Benini conducts impeccably. This production should be seen by anyone who thinks that bel canto opera is nothing but sopranos and tenors standing around, warbling scales.